3: Savages, Barbarians, Civilized Men (Sub-sections 1 to 4)
3.1: The Inscribing Socius
Turns out, desiring-production was a thing from the beginning, “as soon as there is social production and reproduction” (139). The socius, (which the Stanford Encyclopedia defines as “the social body that takes credit for production”) is in the business of “coding desire” and its flows, a form of restriction. Later, we’ll see that capitalism operates on the basis of decoded flows, setting desire free to an extent, replacing former codes with the abstract quantities of capital. It makes sense to view all history in light of capitalism, but in fact that history is not determined by necessity; it is full of “great accidents and amazing encounters.” D&G preface their “universal history” by characterizing it as “contingent, singular, ironic and critical” (140).
The earth is the beginning, the basis of D&G’s series of three socii:
the great unengendered stasis, the element superior to production that conditions the common appropriation and utilization of the ground. It is the surface on which the whole process of production is inscribed, on which the forces and means of labor are recorded, and the agents and the products distributed” (141).
The earth is a body on which the first form of socius, “the territorial machine,” performs inscription and coding. Note that the territorial machine is a “social machine,” not a “technical machine.” The latter has some non-human element, but the former is composed of humans, performing much the same function as any other machine. Technical machinery only begins to become semiautonomous with the advent of capitalism, which is predicated on the dismantling of previous social machines, and on “deterritorialized flows.” Basically the territorial machine takes every natural flow and codes the shit (pun-intestined) out of it.
What does this coding look like? D&G dispute “exchangist” notions of society, and contend instead that the socius is predicated on inscription, “where the essential thing is to mark and to be marked” [and to be Mark, the basis of any great society] (142). The act of marking is what permits the circulation and exchange of objects in the first place. The primitive territorial machine works via “the collective investment of organs” carried out during initiation ceremonies and the like. Whereas our modern societies privatize these organs, decoding and making their flows abstract. Here follows some stuff about anality which I don’t fully understand, but it seems like the anus was the first organ to be privatized in this way. Probably because of its associations with order, regulation and flow. Oedipus is also thoroughly anal. Both capitalism and Oedipus haunt society in the form of anxiety about decoded flows (which means desire set free, I guess?)
The territorial machine marks bodies, which bodies D&G call “the earth’s products,” thereby taking credit for and ownership of these products. Here are some of the ways in which this marking takes place: “tattooing, excising, incising, carving, scarifying, mutilating, encircling, and initiating” (144). Thus organs are collectivized and subsumed within the apparatus of the socius. Humans repress this biological memory, replacing it with a collective memory, a memory of words, not things. Thus we forget that history is inscribed first and foremost on the body; thus we forget the violence on which most advanced societies were built. There’s an awesome passage on cruelty at the end of this section, which I’m gonna quote in full:
Cruelty has nothing to do with some ill-defined or natural violence that might be commissioned to explain the history of mankind; cruelty is the movement of culture that is realized in bodies and inscribed on them, belaboring them. That is what cruelty means. This culture is not the movement of ideology: on the contrary, it forcibly injects production into desire, and conversely, it forcibly injects desire into social production and reproduction. For even death, punishment, and torture are desired, and are instances of production (compare the history of fatalism). It makes men or their organs into the parts and wheels of the social machine. The sign is a position of desire; but the first signs are the territorial signs that plant their flags in bodies. And if one wants to call this inscription in naked flesh “writing,” then it must be said that speech in fact presupposes writing, and that it is this cruel system of inscribed signs that renders man capable of language, and gives him a memory of the spoken word (145).
3.2: The Primitive Territorial Machine
Now we get into more detail about what “territoriality” means. Much of what me might think of as territorializing is actually a form of deterritorializing, particular to later forms of socius: the despotic and the capitalist. The territorial machine is, strictly speaking, the only true territorializing socius, and this action consists in “the declension of alliance and filiation--declining the lineages on the body of the earth, before there is a State” (146). I take this to mean that the territorial machine marks bodies as a means to re-trace their connection with the land, or something.
Then D&G explain filiation and allegiance: “filiation is administrative and hierarchical, but alliance is political and economic” (146). In a primitive society, these factors are important, but they also have a necessary connection to specific localities. At this stage, the socius is akin to a nomad hunter, who has not yet fully appropriated the means of production. But even here, there is no such thing as a pure nomad who “drifts with the flows,” but “always a socius waitin to bear down, already deducting and detaching” (149). As the socius becomes fixed, a process of detachment begins to accelerate. Basically, things become more abstract, and stocks and objects are circulated in increasingly complex ways. As “surplus values of code” become engendered “at the level of the flows,” differences in status emerge. Coding proceeds on this basis.
The social machine thrives on this kind of disequilibrium, and in fact is predicated on “not function[ing] well” (151). Social machines (now clearly identical with desiring-machines) operate unevenly, in fits and starts, feeding on crisis. Capitalism has learned not to feel rupture, disharmony, or dysfunction, and has thus learned to feel secure. These things signal not the death of a system, but its health: “No one has ever died from contradictions [“Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself.] And the more it breaks down, the more it schizophrenizes, the better it works, the American way” (151). USA USA USA. The primitive territorial machine is “segmentary” in a bunch of different ways, involving both “fusion” and “scission.” Here follows lots of confusing stuff about segments. But the upshot is that all the “misfirings and failures” that result merely constitute “a system that is constantly reborn of its own disharmonies” (152).
Primitive societies try to limit the concentration of power, but the main this everyone fears is decoded flows on a “blind, deterritorialized socius” (153). There is exchange in primitive societies but it’s highly restricted, prevented from breaking the codes and becoming abstract or fictional. Turns out Oedipus is also about the fear of a decoded flow. Capitalism is “the negative of all social formations… Primitive societies are not outside history; rather, it is capitalism that is at the end of history… that results from a long history of contingencies and accidents, and that brings on this end” (153). Previous forms of socius saw this coming, and tried to prevent it. This is why we can read history retrospectively in terms of capitalism, barring a couple of caveats about specific terminology like classes etc.
3.3: The Problem of Oedipus
The earth is a body, both surface for inscription and efficient cause and a bunch of other stuff. Lots of confusing stuff here. This section so far seems devoted to explaining the extent to which an undifferentiated surface can exhibit some boundaries or distinct qualities. Here follows the marriage of A and B. Now we move on to the function and necessity of myth. Now we have a discussion of the different kinds of incest. FYI: Hamlet is not Oedipus. Distinct familial roles such as sister and mother did not exist prior to their demarcation through prohibition. Myth marks the transition point from incest’s acceptability to its unacceptability. Therefore, incest does not exist (Q.E.D.). Myth narrates and explains the emergence of new orders. Cool quotation:
It is necessary to recall once more that the law proves nothing about an original reality of desire because it essentially disfigures the desired; and that the transgression proves nothing about a functional reality of the law because, far from being a mockery of the law, it is itself derisory in relation to what the law prohibits in reality (the reason why revolutions have nothing to do with transgressions) (161).
More stuff on incest: is it “impossible” and, if so, what does this mean? The case of incest is parallel to social repression as a whole: “that is what you wanted!” (162). The developing account of incest seems to be an example of how the disjunctions or debts in primitive society (and surplus values of code) develop (plus, minus signs etc.).
Now let’s talk about “territorial representation” in the primitive socius. The representation of desire is also the equivalent of its non-codability, its non-representability, its negative. Thus the socius represents its own limits: “the repression of this limit is possible only to the extent that the representative itself undergoes a repression” (164). Oedipus represents the limit of the socius. At the end of this section, we get the three kinds of territorial representation: “the repressed representative, the repressing representation, and the displaced represented” (166). Well, that clears that up.
3.4: Psychoanalysis and Ethnology
Slow down, folks! Oedipus isn’t on the scene quite yet. We’ll have to wait for the frameworks of familialism established by psychoanalysis. At the primitive stage, social and familial relations are simply far too fluid and complex for such a rigid structure as Oedipus. It is false to equate primitive cures with psychoanalysis. In fact, such cures actually constitute “schizoanalysis in action” (167). Victor Turner gives us a great example of this. D&G show how the story of K, which seems Oedipal to us at first, is anything but. Oedipus is analyzed in a colonial context here, regulating reproduction for the empire. However, for D&G, the colonized represent a “typical example of resistance to Oedipus” (169). Cool quote:
Oedipus is something like euthanasia with ethnocide. The more social reproduction escapes the members of the group, in nature and in extension, the more it falls back on them, or reduces them to a restricted and neuroticized familial reproduction whose agent is Oedipus (169).
People often try to find Oedipus in these colonial contexts, but the examples are always spurious. Another cool quote:
Oedipus is always colonization pursued by other means, it is the interior colony, and we shall see that even here at home, where we Europeans are concerned, it is our intimate colonial education (170).
Psychoanalysts try to divest the colonized of their traditional norms, but couldn’t it be said that Oedipus is merely our own traditional norm? Again, Oedipus presupposes the prohibition of incest; Oedipus does not result from this prohibition. Let’s talk about whether Oedipus is universal. The answer: maybe: “In reality, [Oedipus] is universal because it is the displacement of the limit that haunts all societies, the displaced represented that disfigures what all societies dread absolutely as their most profound negative: namely, the decoded flows of desire” (177).
Somethingsomethingsomething limits
